November 1st

‼️WARNING IN CASE YOU MISSED THE DESCRIPTION:‼️ This fic gets heavy. Throughout there will be instances/mentions of violence, gore, abuse, manipulation, weight fluctuation, and general uncanniness. If you're sensitive to any of that, I don't recommend reading.

For those who can stomach all that, enjoy! :]

Edit for any new readers: Please read my message post from April 15 2023 before reading or commenting. I am not comfortable with people commenting explicitly sexual or inappropriate things on my work, and this goes double if you are underage. If you're a minor then don't come into my comment section with that, seriously. I do read every comment. Thank you <3

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You wake up in a bloody cellar.

Bloody, not as in the emphasizer, but as in a dark, damp, mildewy cellar caked wall to wall and floor tile to floor tile in fucking blood.

Your senses don't catch up quite as fast as you'd like them to. You want to scream. You want to run. You want your eyes to snap open, and to take in every horrible detail at once, to at least know where you are. But you're groggy and your limbs have gone numb.

You take a shaky breath, and there it is—the stench. Oh, God, the stench. You cough, and maybe you'd have begun to dry heave if you weren't still so tired.

The numbness fades after a moment. Now, everything aches. You let out a croaky, guttural sob and fall back on your elbows. They land in something wet and warm. You squeeze your eyes closed and sob again.

Your voice is gone. Something's made your throat go dry and raw. Something...

You swallow back your own terrified dribble and your mouth twists in confusion. Something sweet?

Chocolate, you realize after mulling it over for a minute. You swallow again; it begins to hurt.

You'd consumed ungodly, throat-destroying amounts of chocolate last night.

You take another deep breath—and immediately regret it, but at least you're getting oxygen to your brain—and try to retrace your steps. Chocolate is definitely...a start. You run your tongue over the roof of your mouth. It stings like hell. Maybe there had been something else; wafers, crispies? Hard candy?

You scoff at yourself, though it quickly gives way to a nauseous burp. You clamp a hand over your mouth and close your eyes. Lovely. What the hell are you doing, playing detective with your mouth to figure out what happened last night? You are in a bloody, almost pitch black cellar, aching all over with no voice and no memory of what had landed you here.

We like taking pictures of our guests every year.

You take your hand away from your mouth and find that it's tacky—a substance sticks to your face, syrupy but crumbling like old frosting. You shake your head to banish the thought from your mind before you can even think it. Of course, that doesn't work.

Your hand is covered in dried blood.

You let your arm flop to your side, and there's a muffled clank as something drops with it. You startle and shuffle back pathetically on the ground. Something is scratching, dragging along the messy tiled floor.

You lift your other hand, and miraculously, you can feel it now; the cold, rusted metal on your wrist, the sharp ache in your arm as the shackle weighs it down.

You're in chains.

That way we will never forget them.

A deep voice echoes in your mind, mellow but harsh, like the blare of a broken speaker. The words play back, pause, reverse, and skip in your head like it's really just that: a speaker. The intrusive voice aches your skull, scrapes your spine, locks your jaw so tightly that your teeth grind together.